Story time!


sasha velour says let me tell you the story while a man laughs hysterically


Learning Objectives

Science Story Framing: Narrative

What does it mean to construct a science story?

Science stories are not (often) fantastical. In contrast to confabulations and pure storytelling, they must be based in clear evidence (preferentially with citations!).

Despite this need for a basis in empirical evidence, science narratives can still use common elements of story structure to better engage an audience. This is the same kind of technique you may have seen or experienced through a news broadcast, a nature documentary, or narrative book, or in a well-crafted podcast. Think about how the various science communciation examples you’ve seen so far use story telling and narrative to nest empirical data or results in a broader/more accessible narrative to make the science more compelling…

There are several examples of the standard elements of story structure. As BU students, you’ve likely encountered these in your First-Year Writing Seminar, and may want to review these elements to help with this exercise. These are not universal across the world - different cultures may find different story structures compelling, and this may be a consideration for your Target Audience - but they can provide a starting point for framing a story’s narrative, based in scientific evidence.

Keep in mind, the elements we discuss in class are not exhaustive or definitive, and can be seen as based largely in a European-centric narrative structure, in fact tracing to much of the work of the Greek philosopher Aristotle.

We encourage you to think broadly about elements of storytelling from across the world, and to research these methods if you desire.

Remember:

For more detail, please check out these resources:

Crafting Your Own Narrative

Storyboarding Your Project

<this image presents an example storyboard of a student preparing a storyboard, and is also a link to a blog with instructions for storyboarding


In Discussion today, once you’ve thought through what you want your narrative to be, you should spend some time trying to storyboard your SciComm. Click on the image above to get some clear and easy tips about how to successfully develop a helpful storyboard that will make putting together your final SciComm project a lot easier.

This will look slightly different depending on your media type (for example, a documentary video vs. an Adobe Creative Cloud presentation), but the general idea is the same - to craft narrative “beats” or points in your science communication.

By next week’s Discussion (which will be held remotely), you should have already completed a draft of your SciComm, which you will upload to a Blackboard Discussion group for the Peer Review process!

For Next Week

Continue your science storytelling journey! We have just 1 week until you present your draft SciComm for peer-review (in the next Discussion). Use your storyboarding to create your first draft!

Familiarize yourself with the Project Peer-Review / Final Rubric, which you will use to give feedback to to other groups in the peer-review process on Blackboard (https://learn.bu.edu)!

Your draft SciComm project should be uploaded to the Discussion on Blackboard by Midnight of April 24 so that they are available for Peer Review during Discussion sections on April 25 and 26!

Please note: the SciComm aspects of this course are based closely on a similar course at UC Berkeley, IB35ac, designed by Leslea Hlusko (© 2020). These materials have been accessed and adapted with her permission as part of the BRIDGE Project, developed by her student, Ph.D. Candidate Taormina Lepore.